The Angry Ghost and Other Stories

by Peter Spokes

  Despite its seeming inconsequence to my interest, by the candlelight and under the scrutiny of the bats I wrote down in my notebook one word.

  Titanic.

  Chapter: 3

  Scene 1: Choices

  The 11th April found me perched precariously atop the oak tree – or at least as high as I was able to climb. If I were to fall, I guess I might break my neck as I can relate to inanimate objects – such as the ground; but what effect it might have on my already lifeless body is anyone’s guess.

  The reason for my location and mental meanderings was to better see ‘The Ship’ as it approached the bay and dock.

  Any distraction from my mediocrity was welcome.

  It was almost 11.00 am before it appeared in the bay; white smoke trailed high from four titan funnels.

  I watched in awe as it approached.

  As I waited for it to dock I was distracted by the couple under the oak – the child was absent. Harsh words were again exuding from the man’s mouth.

  “You said she would be here!” he said angrily.

  “I thought she might be,” the lady said quietly.

  “You know I cannot wait…!”

  I looked down and stared. I had last seen this man in the corridor ignoring the pleas of ‘April’.

  I shook my head. He was no man to be married to… I thought. Perhaps the woman stays with him for the sake of the child.

  As I turned away my gaze caught the young child close to the entrance: she appeared to be… hiding.

  As I stared at her I thought I noticed the girl looking up at me, but then saw a magpie squawking close by; but for the briefest moment I wondered…

  Then I nearly fell out of the tree as the little girl put a single finger to her lips and then disappeared through the gate.

  She must have seen me, or did she see someone she knew in the graveyard.

  No. I was certain she had been looking at me… and the magpie.

  I looked back at the bay and the approaching vessel.

  To say the Titanic was massive would be like saying Mount Everest was high. I watched spellbound as it became impossibly gargantuan as it approached the dock.

  Sadly, once docked, only the tops of the funnels were visible to me.

  I thought of the glorious time those on board must have. The newspaper I had read earlier made mention of its facilities being not unlike those in top hotels with restaurants, steam baths, and a squash court and even a gym, though I doubted anyone boarding with less than a first-class ticket would enjoy those particular facilities.

  I closed my eyes for a moment and imagined myself aboard and walking the promenade deck.

  I sighed, envying those that sat at the captain’s table dining on lobster or pheasant.

  I wondered what those in steerage were dining on.

  But – I felt – there were always those that seemed born to enjoy the finer things in life while others were denied the same luxuries.

  It was the way of the world.

  I remember reading in the chapel library a quote from Oscar Wilde;

  We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.

  I wondered why I thought this way; had I been someone ‘in the gutter’ and ‘looking at the stars’?

  I watched seagulls gliding round the funnels for several minutes wishing so much that I were one of the passengers preparing to board her before I finally decided it was time to climb down and return to terra-firma.

  Behind the oak, the drunk lay immobile though occasionally emitting an incoherent mutter, and still grasping a bottle.

  I shook my head and wondered again about him. Did he drink through his incomprehension of life: or was it that he understood it too well?

  I felt again that despite our obvious disconnection, we were twins in a world neither of us appeared attuned to and only wanted to make sense of.

  Scene 2: Loss

  It was almost a week later I picked up a local journal from the waste bin and was horrified to see that during the night of the 15th April the ship I had seen had hit an iceberg and sunk with an unknown number unaccounted for.

  Very little else was written.

  For a further week I paced in disbelief wondering how something so immense and carrying so many people could suffer such a tragedy – the paper had indicated it was unsinkable for God’s sake!

  I waited impatiently for a newspaper to be discarded but it wasn’t until the end of the month that I finally got my hands on one with something informative therein.

  I returned to the library and spread out the edition and read about the disaster and focussed on the article that I hoped would provide me with further insight.

  The Titanic had indeed docked at 11.30 am at Queenstown from Cherbourg – I had borne witness to this myself – and left at 1.30 pm for New York. On the morning of the 15th it hit an iceberg and at 2.20 am it sank into the cold and lonely depths of the North Atlantic Ocean. One hundred and twenty-three souls boarded at Queenstown and seventy-nine of them were lost – in all, over 1,500 lives were gone.

  Then I read further; it was with some fortune that a steamship, the RMS Carpathia, arrived some nine and a half hours after the collision and an hour and a half after the sinking. It had rescued around 700 survivors from lifeboats.

  Once the massive loss of life had become known, the White Star Line chartered the cable ship Mackay-Bennett to retrieve bodies. Also, three other Canadian ships followed in the search: the cable ship Minia; the lighthouse supply ship Montmagny and sealing vessel Algerine. Each ship left with embalming supplies, undertakers, and clergy. Of the 333 victims that were eventually recovered, 328 were retrieved by the Canadian ships and five more by passing North Atlantic steamships.

  Each ship was sent from the closest port to the sinking, and the bodies returned to the same location.

  I stared as in my mind the connection I had been seeking was finally made.

  Halifax, Nova Scotia.

  I sat and wept for the victims and the realisation of the connection I had been seeking.

  The Titanic was indeed ‘The Ship’.

  So who were Linus, April and Alex? Were they a spurious mini explosion in my synapsis, a memory of real persons pertaining to the tragedy? And, if the latter, what was my association to them?

  And why did ‘April’ seem so important to me? Or was it simply the word game with the month that I can never leave?

  Scene 3: Mid-April

  The rest of the month revealed no more clues and so April once again drew to a close – and began again.

  To reduce any possibility of my missing something, I tried to locate myself in a different place to the same day of the previous month.

  It was approaching the end of the first week as I watched with diminishing pleasure the familiar visitors coming and going through the graveyard – including the drunk leaning against the oak and mumbling to himself – when I was distracted by a woman’s gentle voice; the graveyard tended to be a mute place generally. I looked over and recognised her as the lady I had seen often under the oak – normally in the presence of the disagreeable husband – though I saw no sign of him.

  She was talking to the child in a comforting manner and appeared to be reciting a poem.

  From a distance I watched her stare into her child’s eyes as the latter looked up – unblinking and smiling – into hers.

  “On your first day, I held you,

  And with no doubt at all,

  I swore no harm would come your way.

  And I’d catch you if you fall.

  I make this promise,

  That I will protect you.

  I will always be…”

  Suddenly, I felt hot and dizzy. I looked down for several moments. Those words were familiar; where had I heard them? I had spent much time in the chapel’s
library reading an eclectic range of literacy.

  I tried so hard to concentrate. I don’t remember saying them – or indeed hearing them – but they were strongly entrenched in my psyche.

  Then I was distracted by a shout…

  Scene 4: Contact

  “April… for God’s sake!” I heard and I looked up and over at the disagreeable man now approaching the couple and strutting – with some urgency – to the woman and child.

  I recognised the man’s face; there was the same arrogance in his attitude earlier in the month when he had been chiding his wife and in the dream where he was abandoning them.

  “What do you think you are doing?” he said harshly. “You will not be the cause of my missing my passage to New York; you know the importance of my getting there!”

  “I just thought Alex and I would say goodbye to my mother before we go. I doubt we will ever return?” she said timidly.

  “Lord no, New York is where my future lies… and nothing… nothing will prevent that!”

  As I watched and listened I became more aware that I was really not warming to Linus.

  You bastard! I said loudly. It was a frustrating side to my ‘life’ that I could scream my head off and still not be heard.

  And yet both the child and her mother appeared to look over at me… for a moment.

  After looking behind me to see what may have distracted them I approached closer. I looked to the lady and the child. “So you must be April and Alex, I presume?” I said rhetorically.

  To my utter astonishment, April looked up and smiled but then put her hand to her mouth. “Oh my God…”

  My mouth gaped in surprise. Linus looked over too.

  I managed to stop myself from blurting the obvious but understandable ‘You can see me?’

  “What is it now?” Linus looked over irritated.

  I watched tears of – I thought – happiness start down April’s cheeks. “Linus! Look… look, it’s…”

  “What is it?” he repeated.

  “Look… it’s… Daddy! …”

  The astonished look on Linus’s face was nothing compared to that on my own.

  “April… April! Are you sick?… Ah, I see…” Linus started, “You think making up some spurious malady will make us miss the embarkation? Well, there is still a week and a half to go!”

  I looked between them.

  “April?” was all I could say. Though my mouth opened, nothing left it as my mind became a sudden chaotic maelstrom of emotions where love, loss and a desire for coherency and logic vied for first place.

  Linus moved forward and grasped his wife firmly by the arm, “I have no time for this nonsense!”

  “Leave her alone!” I said with some menace and moved forward to push him back but was met with a lack of a physical resistance as my hand went through him.

  Unfortunately, if April was upset before, now she appeared inconsolable.

  “Daddy!”

  “April! Enough! There are only the three of us here!” Linus said.

  “What?…” she protested. “Look!”

  “I see no one, and neither do you!”

  I began to wonder myself just who was seeing whom and who was real and who wasn’t.

  The child too was looking quite upset as if she were on the verge of crying as she looked up at her mother – “Mummy, what’s wrong?” she said, her lower lip trembling.

  “It’s your granddaddy, sweetie – he’s here.”

  The little girl looked around and I would swear that for a briefest moment her eyes focussed on mine.

  “Come, April!… I have no time for your… antics…” Linus persisted.

  April turned to him. “No… no… don’t you see him?” she protested. “He is here… now… with me.”

  “I’m taking you home; your father is… probably lost in some pyramid; he abandoned you long ago – remember?” Linus said smiling.

  I was so angry with Linus I almost missed the most important thing; I found my tongue. “April! – do not board the Titanic! – you will die; you will all die!!” I shouted.

  April stared at me as Linus started to pull his wife towards the graveyard’s exit. Linus looked around blindly as he hauled his wife towards the gate.

  His daughter trailed several yards behind before pausing and looking back and – once again – I felt almost certain she was looking into my eyes.

  Through desperation I shouted after her, “Do not board the Titanic.”

  I heard Linus shout, “Alex! Get yourself here now! Or you’ll feel my hand!”

  I watched the young child turn and run.

  I watched them go with such a sad frustration and a feeling that nothing so pertinent or important had ever happened in my odd existence. I had missed the moment that something so precious to me had slipped through my fingers, my warning unheeded.

  Impotently, I followed them to the exit and approached the gates. As expected I found I could progress no further.

  Miserably, I returned to my seat.

  I heard a muttering and looked over at the drunk. He moved closer and rested his hands on the back of the seat. “My friend… my friend…” he said with tears in his eyes – and then stared directly at me. “I feel it time… we talked.”

  Jesus! I thought, just when you think you’re on your own and no one can see you… several come along at once!

  Scene 5: The Drunk

  “You can see me… too…?” I said.

  “Seeing is believing but believers are not always… seeing…” he slurred.

  “That’s nice…” I said looking over at the graveyard gates still despondent and feeling an opportunity missed.

  I turned my gaze to the man leaning heavily on the back of the seat. “So how is it a drunk can see me?” I said “… unless the alcohol helps…” I added a little unsympathetically.

  He ignored my question, “You did the best you could and more than I could do…” He paused. “You know, children never appreciate their father… they really should… because without them… they would never be…” he said as he closed his eyes and belched loudly.

  “So you have children?” I asked.

  “I did once… and a grandchild.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” I said with genuine sadness. “How long ago did… they die?”

  “They haven’t… yet… but will…” he said.

  “Ah!” was all I could say feeling there must be more to this, unless he was simply a confused and incoherent drunk – or perhaps a psychopath.

  “They will die and I thought I could bring them back.”

  “O… kay,” I said slowly. “So as of yet they haven’t died… yet you want to ‘bring them back’?” I said realising how this conversation was going to go. Clearly the plethora of little cogs moving around inside the drunk’s head were taking him a somewhere variant path from normality.

  He lifted a brandy bottle to his lips once more and missed. The front of his shirt became wetter. “I was once quite… well respected in the arts of… let’s say… occult leanings.”

  I nodded with serious uninterest.

  “But I kept failing…”

  “Failing?” I asked.

  “… To bring them back to life…” he finished.

  I paused before, “Though they are not dead…?”

  “You are not listening; they will be…” he said seriously.

  I nodded. “And you cannot bring them back to life? … You surprise me.”

  Suddenly he giggled. “So little gratitude, for in a way, I’m your father too – my offspring; I brought you into this world too…”

  And with that he skipped away before I could question him further.

  All he had said made no sense and so I dismissed it. There were too many important things on my mind that I needed to find so
me coherency to before analysing the spurious ramblings of a drunk.

  “Why don’t you give the liquor a rest? You’re not talking sense!” I shouted after him.

  He stopped, looked back at me and smiled. “I may not be talking sense… but I understand the situation. Do you?”

  “Understand what?”

  “Why you are here… and what you are…”

  But just then he staggered away beyond the tree. I heard him mumbling to himself.

  “I cannot speak to her… the emissary can but… doesn’t understand… I thought it would; after all, it’s a reflection of me. The kalimat alttaqa has eluded me, and so I have the emissary but not the power.”

  I shook my head. The poor chap was clearly in a world of his own – but then so was I.

  I stood up and returned to the comfort of the church crypt while summarising that no one in the world can see me except April, possibly her daughter, and a drunk that appeared to travel through time.

  I thought on his odd reference he made of me as ‘what I am’ rather than the more reasonable ‘who I am’.

  Scene 6: Connections and Fates

  I sat with my face in my hands and tried to piece together the last ten minutes.

  April could see me and thought I was her father – and had just arrived from Egypt – while Linus could not see me and thought I was somewhere ‘probably lost in some pyramid’ having abandoned them ‘long ago’.

  Therefore, I’m not dead and – ergo – not a ghost despite my apparent incorporeal status. But – though I tried my damnedest to pay no attention to it, the drunk, whose perception of the world I should certainly be ignoring, considered me as a ‘what’ rather than a ‘who’.

  Was I once again looking too deeply?

  And why can only some people see me?

  But April had seen – and heard me – and not only her but the drunk too.